Posts Tagged ‘government’

This past weekend Judge Jeanine Pirro interviewed Rep. Chris Stewart, a member of the House Permanent Select Committee. He was exquisitely careful about what he said and how he said it, but if you have been paying attention for the past few weeks to the evidence of government rot, you can do a bit of reading between the lines: someone high up is cooperating.

That someone is likely Bill Priestap, FBI Asst. Director in charge of Counterintelligence, whose name has been curiously absent from everything which has been in the news. His boss, Andrew McCabe, has been caught. His subordinate, Peter Strzok, has most certainly been caught. And former FBI Director Comey previously pushed him in front of the bus by trying to make him the grand fall guy during a Congressional hearing. So Priestap is either going to meekly be the fall guy for the entire set of projects, or he recognized that bus and is cooperating with the investigators.

Here are some of those who have actually colluded with Russians. And here is a list of some of those who have left, been fired or been demoted from the DOJ-FBI since the election.

When President Obama shut down the government, he made sure that extra Park Police were on hand along to make sure that the physical barriers which had been brought in were sufficient to keep school children away from the Lincoln Memorial and veterans away from the Vietnam wall and the WWII memorial.

Under the just ended Schumer Shutdown, Interior Secretary and former Navy SEAL Ryan Zinke was at such sites, welcoming visitors, handing out brochures and picking up trash. Yes, his agency was furloughed, but he was out there by himself. To the Leftists trying to rewrite Obama’s history by claiming the parks are not safe without workers, law enforcement was at the venues, so since Antif, the bitter leftovers from the Women’s March, or the Dreamers didn’t show up, visitors were perfectly safe and undoubtedly had more room to breathe at the most popular attractions.

Since the shutdown was so short, I won’t be posting separately on it, but here is a very good read on it by Scott McKay, and another by Rich Lowry, here. Let’s hear it for the Schumer Surrender!

The reason this piece mentions Paul Krugman, the New York Times writer who reminds us at every opportunity that he won a nobel Prize for economics, is that he and his acolytes presume that government spending drives economic growth. Therefore, any decrease in taxation and any decrease in government revenues is bad for individuals.

The sad tale of Williston, North Dakota shows Mr. Krugman wrong. Government spending is a tax on everyone, and all politicians fail to control their spending desires when presented with a pile of other people’s money. Williston had huge revenues for a time from fracking, and spent like the proverbial drunken sailor on projects it did not need, and now has debts it can never hope to repay. Government growth occurs because there is privately created wealth for it to take, and the only smart thing to do economically is to restrict government spending. Those who create wealth generally search for ways to increase their wealth, and they tend to be much superior than governments when it comes to spending habits.

I think we should all band together and purchase Mr. Krugman a plane ticket to Williston plus a motel room for a week. Perhaps if he has to live in the wreckage caused by his supposed mastery of economics, he will gain a dribble of common sense through simple observation.

Charlie Martin offers a timely tutorial on Bitcoin, and the alleged attributes which have made it so valuable to certain segments of the population. You may still be somewhat puzzled after processing Martin’s article, but at least you will grasp why governments and central bankers hate it and why people who want to evade such control are desperate to get it.

UPDATE: This is a view of Bitcoin as a fraud by the man who inspired the “Wolf of Wall Street.”

We do not need saving by any federal agency from a small, 20 year old artisan bakery and restaurant well liked by its customers. I judge we will be quite safe eating bread which contains the unauthorized ingredient of “love”. I believe we are in far more danger from the cold, dead hand of humorless bureaucracy as it inserts itself into our daily lives.

…not Union Day, though you will see precious little celebrating the worker instead of the labor unions which claim to represent them. Right to Work states (we now have 28 of them) have better economies and provide more protections for workers than those states controlled by unions.

Unions are desperate to keep the old labor laws which basically allow unions to rob workers who don’t want their representation, but an intriguing proposal called “Worker’s Choice” would ostensibly solve some of the problems which progressives claim makes workers who did not vote to become labor serfs “freeloaders”. Of course, the real problem is that labor unions don’t give a flying flip about the individual workers, only about the streams of money that forced union dues provide for the fat cat labor bosses and the Democratic Party which has long relied on the cash and free bodies the unions provide for rallies and protests., as a grotesque distortion of “in-kind” donations

You should not be surprised that the National Treasury Employees is having hysterics at the less than 2% pay raise for federal employees proposed by Pres.Trump for 2018, claiming that government workers are being shortchanged. This doesn’t hold up in the face of the latest Congressional Budget Office report showing that federal workers are on average still slightly ahead. They are considerably ahead for those with only a high school education, and far ahead when you consider the benefits, such as nearly free health care which is both very generous and carries none of the idiotic requirements of ObamaCare. I’ve never seen a study which attaches a monetary value to the fact that federal employees are extremely difficult to fire, even in the face of repeated failures and malfeasance.

I’ll be adding to this post as I find other articles worthy of your attention. Have a fine Labor Day!

UPDATE: In case you don’t realize how badly unions are skewed towards government, this article will enlighten you.

UPDATE: Trump’s decrease in the number of quest-worker visas resulted in employers hiring Americans, and at higher wages than the guest workers would have been paid. Of course, businesses are whining that higher labor costs make prices rise. That’s true, but most of the jobs involved don’t pay $20 an hour regardless of who performs them, so this may cut into profits somewhat, but it won’t be a huge factor.

UPDATE: And yes, Americans do work harder than anyone else, at least the ones not employed by the government.

UP)DATE: I’ve been reminded that few people know the history of this special day, so here it is.

If government were left unchecked, there would soon be no wildlife, but fortunately Trump appointed former Navy SEAL Ryan Zinke as Secretary of the Interior, and he understands that without the involvement of hunters and fishermen, those precious resources would disappear.